Mr. Langston to Mr. Bayard.
Port-au-Prince, Hayti, April 29, 1885. (Received May 15.)
Sir: I have the honor to advise you that I have just received (4 o’clock p.m.) a dispatch of this day’s date from this Government sustaining in elaborate argument the decision of the court of cassation in the case of Mr. C. A. Van Bokkelen and declining to release him.
This dispatch comes to me too late for suitable preparation for transmission to the Department by the steamer leaving this port for New York via Kingston to-morrow morning at 10 o’clock, and hence I am compelled to announce simply the present attitude of the Government in answer to your own presentation of the case in your dispatch No. 343, a copy of which, per your instructions, was duly furnished the honorable acting secretary of state of foreign relations, Mr. Prophète.
Mr. Van Bokkelen has been returned to the common jail, where he is now confined, although his health is still poor—not at all improved, really—and his strength is feeble and apparently constantly declining.
By the very first opportunity I will transmit copies of the correspondence which has passed between this legation and the Haytian Government as to this case since I received your last instructions with regard thereto.
It may be proper for me to state here that, in losing his dispatch, Mr. Prophète holds, as translated:
I regret then not to be able to order the immediate release of Mr. Van Bokkelen, incarcerated in consequence of a regular judgment ordering constraint of body, and confirmed by the supreme tribunal of Hayti, because, on the one part, he is a foreigner, and the treaty of 1865, as I have shown, properly interpreted by the Haytian courts, does not mention “la cession de biens judiciaire,” which is an institution of the civil law, the benefit of which pertains only to a Haytian; on the other part, because, in acting as you desire, not only would the executive power transcend its powers, but would voluntarily expose itself to legitimate demands of the American firm of Toplitz & Co., which prosecutes Mr. Van Bokkelen.
Awaiting your further instructions in the premises,
I am, &c.,